


Mutatis Mutandis

by introductory



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Things I Wrote In An Hour, Trans Character, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-23
Updated: 2011-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-21 16:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/introductory/pseuds/introductory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Perhaps it's unfair. Perhaps it's selfish. Perhaps it's fundamentally wrong that you are the most powerful telepath in your knowledge, that you make your life by reading other people's secrets, and yet you think it your right to keep one of your own. </i></p><p>Charles Xavier was not born Charles Xavier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutatis Mutandis

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/2439.html?thread=2632583#t2632583) on xmen_firstkink.
> 
> A note for those planning to bookmark: please file this under **transgender fic** and **slash** , not _genderswap_ or _het_.

1.

Perhaps it's unfair. Perhaps it's selfish. Perhaps it's fundamentally wrong that you are the most powerful telepath in your knowledge, that you make your life by reading other people's secrets, and yet you think it your right to keep one of your own.

Raven knows because she was there. To her you are the boy (the girl) who took her in, who fed her and sheltered her, who protected her with your mind from the violence breeding under your roof. You are the person who gave her a way out. She will always love you for this, even years later, when the two of you stand on opposite sides of the battleground; she will always remember a kitchen in New York, and the way you held out your hand and said, _take whatever you want_.

To Raven you were (are) her best friend; to everyone else you are Charles Xavier, Ph.D, one of the most respected scientists in your field. The kind of person who, no matter how far back one digs, has no skeletons in his closet (you've hidden them so well). A man with an open, honest face; a man you can trust, implicitly, with anything.

 

2.

Raven tries on bodies in your bedroom, the one place the two of you feel completely safe. You watch, mesmerized, as she ripples pink and blue and pink again: your mother, your stepfather and stepbrother, the groundskeeper, the maid. She's still not perfect, but she's getting better at imitating voices and mannerisms, the way your stepfather glares, the way your mother sighs.

"Try someone who isn't real," you say, chin propped up on a pillow. "Can you shapeshift into someone who you've never seen before?"

Raven smooths her hands down the front of her (your mother's) dress. "Let's see," she says, reverting to her blue self. "Who should I be?"

"Whoever you want," you tell her. Raven quirks a smile, and her skin ripples again—and settles, and you nearly fall off the bed in fright. "Who is that supposed to be," you ask, throat dry, voice squeaky.

"It's you," says Raven, and blinks your blue eyes, licks your red lips. "If you were born with a Y chromosome and not two Xs. You did say to make someone up." (She's been reading science books with you, late at night under the covers, by flashlight. You think you want to be a scientist one day, to figure out what it is inside your brain that makes other people's walls drop and flood you with their thoughts.) She turns back to the mirror, pinches her cheeks. "You're quite handsome, you know. A strapping young man."

 _Raven,_ you say, lost for words, and the expression on her (your) face is full of apology before she realizes the desperation in your voice isn't a command for her to stop.

 

3.

Charlotte Xavier graduates from high school and is never heard from again. Charles Xavier graduates from Harvard at sixteen and Oxford at twenty-two and becomes one of the world's most renowned geneticists, a crusader for mutant rights, headmaster of the finest (only) institution for impressionable young mutants.

No one ever asks about Charles Xavier's childhood; no one inquires after missing documents or baby pictures or why you get headaches after a long day of classes and socializing (of making people see what you want them to see, quashing any doubts that come even close to the truth, _you know, Charlie, you're damn pretty for a guy_ ). The testosterone pills take care of the rest.

In retrospect, you've had a secret identity your whole life.

 

4.

"Heterochromia," you tell the girl at the bar, and three minutes later you are commanding Raven to get her coat.

You bed women now and then, when the mood strikes, because it's easier to be straight than bent. You've always preferred men, hard angles and the rasp of stubble, but women don't ask questions when your face is pressed between their thighs; when you slink out the door, afterwards, still fully-dressed.

You're fuming the entire way home, and Raven knows you well enough to keep silent. You wanted to go home with someone tonight, a point of contact with someone who wasn't Raven, because as much as you love her, sometimes you can't bear to look at her. She's blonde this time around, curvy and perfect, and it makes you want to press your hands to your flat chest and say, _I earned this, I bled for this_. But you've never been able to stay angry with Raven for long, and that night you both fall asleep on the sofa, wrapped around each other like children.

 

5.

When your past becomes a secret, and when a fiction becomes your present, and when your present is the body you wake up in, the face you see every morning in the mirror, what, then, becomes the truth?

 

6.

Erik Lehnsherr is at once everything you want and everything you want to be.

Except—no. You could do without his obsessive quest for revenge; the simmering rage that he just barely manages to keep hidden, that sleeps, sometimes, on days when training goes well. How one man can speak of his desire for murder in one moment and then smile so broadly in the next is (nearly) beyond you.

(Humans and mutants alike thrive on contradiction.)

Erik is not the most violent man you have ever met—that title goes to a man long dead—but he is singularly the most _terrifying_. Not in terms of what he can do, but in terms of what he makes you _feel_. You dream about him, you want him like you have never wanted anything before in your second life. But for Erik, it seems, Shaw is everything: you (the chess matches, this school you have built, the memories you still build) are just a means to an end.

The kiss, when it comes, is unexpected. The two of you are walking through the corridors of the mansion; you are thinking about Darwin and Angel, and how you failed them both, and Erik looks sideways and says, "I can _hear_ you." His hands come up to your shoulders and your back hits the wall, and then his lips are on yours. It's glorious. It's everything you wanted and more.

Erik presses his body to yours, hard against your hip. His hands wander lower, lower, and you gasp _yes_ into his mouth as his fingers reach the clasp of your trousers. Perhaps you should know better. Perhaps you should be pulling away. You don't.

You can tell when he realizes; when his fingers meet with empty space, when he panics, briefly. Your arm shoots out to stop him from pulling away, catching him by the elbow.

" _Mutatis mutandis_." You can feel your heartbeat pounding in your ears. "Necessary changes."

Erik stays exactly where he is. " _Perfektion_ ," he says, and kisses you again, the word echoing in his thoughts and his lips and his hands, mapping your body like new land.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments [here on LJ](http://introductory.livejournal.com/991227.html), if you can.


End file.
